A symposium is proposed for the December 1985 Baltimore meeting of the American Society of Zoologists. The topic to be explored is muscle fiber typing as a bioassay of nerve muscle interaction. The topic is timely due to the recent explosion of techniques being used to study muscle fiber types and their relationship to neuronal interaction in both vertebrate and invertebrate animals. The interesting questions being posed in this field today relate to the molecular mechanisms of the regulatory interaction. The symposium will take a comparative approach as significant progress has been made in establishing neural influences on muscle fiber properties in both vertebrate and arthropod muscle. This symposium proposes discussion and assimilation of modern muscle fiber typing methods and their use in answering mechanistic questions about peripheral nerve-muscle interaction in both vertebrates and arthropods. This comparative approach will assemble information on neuromuscular systems from two groups of unrelated organisms, where differences have often been stressed and basic and general similarities in peripheral nerve-muscle interaction have not always been appreciated. Such a symposium has not been held or published previously.